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It’s been an exciting year in the world of solid-state drives (SSD) namely due to the dramatic price decline. Looking at the best-selling SSDs for 2018, it’s important to note that beginning of 2016 to around August or September of 2018, prices were pretty stagnant. Thanks to the oversupply of 3D TLC NAND flash memory, it ushered in a dramatic price reduction for the consumer market.

Many people, from young gaming enthusiasts to business professionals, were probably reluctant to upgrade their storage to a more modern SSD, but the time has come. Not only do these SSDs provide that performance boost, but they also provide more reliable storage now (looking at the 100TB Nimbus SSD for enterprises). Unsurprisingly, only two of our top ten best-selling SSDs were in the 250GB range, while the rest were either 500GB or more. Traditionally, PC builders used the combination of a smaller SSD for operating system and a HDD for bulk storage, such as media, files, and large programs. There is shift in consumer behavior as SSDs are fulfilling both functionalities of storage and booting.

Diving specifically into the types of SSDs, we did see sales here and there for M.2 drives using the new and improved PCI Express technology as opposed to the standard SATA technology. However, PCI’s incremental speed improvement doesn’t justify the price yet as our top 10 best-selling SSDs were all SATA 3.0 SSDs.

Without a doubt, Samsung again had a great run in 2018 with the entry of their 860 EVO line of SSDs. The top 3 best-selling SSDs were all 860 EVO series, which speaks to the reliable, all-around performance backed by the trusted 5-year warranty. Samsung’s phenomenal performance is also due to the strong branding – in reality, a lot of the other SSDs, such as Crucial MX500 or Western Digital Blue performs just as well.

Looking at the best-selling SSDs for 2018, it’s important to note that beginning of 2016 to around August or September of 2018, prices were pretty stagnant. Thanks to the oversupply of 3D TLC NAND flash memory, it ushered in a dramatic price reduction for the consumer market.